Out of Sight, Out of Mind
by Dark Hope Assassin
Summary: He’d help her forget. He’d make her forget repeatedly, till she couldn’t even recall the face of that shinigami buddy of hers, till he was all she could think of. It just never even occurred to him he might need help to forget HER as well. //GrimmHime//


**Warning:** The narrative of this story is mostly written from Grimmjow's point of view. Thus, there is crude language abound. Just be warned so it doesn't take you by surprise. :D

* * *

_**Out of Sight, Out of Mind**_

* * *

It had been going on for a while. And he really wasn't sure what had been up with him at the time but he'd decided to play the nice guy and pretend he didn't notice. Which was hard, because he thought even some of his fellow Arrancar and Espada noticed it—she failed _that_ much at being covert about it.

To think she'd want to play with fire _that_ much after he had warned her she'd get burnt if she continued with that pace…

You're wondering what the problem is?

Well, the fucking problem was that Aizen's cute little bitch was practically _stalking_ him. This in itself was ridiculous because _no one_ stalked Grimmjow, the all-powerful Sexta Espada. Wimpy, sissy guys were subject to stalking, not manly men—_deadly_, manly men—like the azure-haired Arrancar. Having her following his every move with her large pitifully sullen eyes undermined him, _mocked_ his stature and made a laughing stock of him among his Espada fellows.

At least, that's how Grimmjow saw it.

And that was the most important thing.

Or rather, the most important thing was that he had told her—_warned her_—not to bug him in any way, because he'd take that as an invitation to do whatever he pleased with her. He had _told_ her that, to her face, when she was being chased around by that ass-wipe Nnoitra. He didn't think he was stuttering or that his speech was inarticulate, so why hadn't she understood him when he'd told her then?

Did she really want to get herself in deep shit _that_ badly?

Thoughts like that had been chasing each other around his mind for the past few weeks that Orihime had been trying to come in some sort of contact with him—that was just the thing – she always tailed him, watched him, but never spoke a word to him, never stood in front of him so he couldn't really "bust" her for going against his warning earlier. He had been patient and nice about it, ignoring the thoughts, ignoring her sad excuses for acting inconspicuous, ignored _her_.

But there was only so much shit you could take, seriously. Everything had its end, and Grimmjow's obedience and patience were of the first things to run out for the bulky Arrancar, no matter what the occasion.

It was a day—boring, tedious, unimpressive—just like any other. It happened when he was just coming out of his quarters, planning on going he'd forgotten where, because he didn't make even a step out of the room before he saw _her_, standing there, right in front of his room, hand raised for the handle, looking like a deer caught in the headlights of a truck when he'd gone out.

The tension could be sliced with a knife if anyone had bothered trying.

Orihime just stood there, stoned, glued to the spot, grappling for an excuse to be where she was, her whole being suddenly seized with anxiety. She obviously hadn't taken into account the possibility of being caught. She was desperate for a coherent thought to grab onto before the Sexta had a chance to go mad.

And Grimmjow? Grimmjow was torn between a million ways he could react to the sight that had greeted him so for the time being he had unknowingly settled on being shell-shocked and completely disbelieving his _freaking eyes_…

"Ah! G-Grimmjow! I, uh, umm,…" The human girl stuttered, a nerve wreck in front of a judge as severe as the sapphire eyed Arrancar. Her life could depend on how plausible was the excuse she came up with.

And that notion only served to further rob her of her reason.

"I was just passing by and—" Even to someone as weird as Orihime it was clear that she wasn't starting off on the right foot. The settling of a rage as unbridled as it can get on the face of her interlocutor only made her even more nervous, if it was even physically possible.

She was going to pick up from where she'd stopped and come up with something better to back up her presence, but before she had realized what had happened, her back was slammed—rough, hard, very painfully—against the door to his room, which was now closed.

It didn't take a genius to realize she was in serious trouble. Especially when a livid, manically grinning Grimmjow was looking at her as if she was his prey.

Which she probably was anyway, all things considered.

"What the fuck are you doing here, woman? _Huh_?" She flinched at the volume of his voice and shrunk back as far as she could, probably wishing she could disappear.

Oh, _now_ she gets it, he thought irately.

If you asked him in that moment _why_ he was so pissed, he wouldn't have been able to answer. He just was. He just hated it when no-good wimps like that human girl didn't know their place and pushed their luck when he'd been nice enough to let them off the hook so many times. He just loathed it when his victims thought they could tap-dance on his nerves when he'd gone out of his way to let them live a while longer.

And when his prey pissed him off, the price to pay to soothe his temper was _high_.

From that close he could practically _smell_ her fear and he fed on it, it fueled him and enraged him further. Yes, that's right, imbecilic girl—be very afraid when you're moronic enough not to know your best interest. He was done treating her like the "guest" Aizen claimed she was in Las Noches; he was done playing nice—when she asked for it, she'd get what she'd asked for.

"I thought I told you what would happen if I catch you in here or anywhere around my room again and yet _here you are_." She cringed and turned her head away from him, no longer able to hold that perfectly insane gaze of his. He bared his canines in an evil grin and leaned even further towards her, pressing her up flat against the door. "That sounds just like a courteous invitation to me."

She opened her mouth to squeak out something in her defense—another empty excuse—but he halted her words when he grinded his hips against her violently, threateningly. She gave another pathetic squeal and clammed up, eyes clenching closed, a look of dread seizing her face.

"What—you didn't expect this would happen? What _did_ you expect then, since you've been watching me for so long? Think you had me figured out? Believed I was actually _good_ beneath a façade that I only keep up in front of Aizen and his band of goons?" He threw his head back for a forced bark of a laugh, feeling her flinch as he did so. "Fucking hilarious," he breathed menacingly into her ear and her breath caught in her throat in her fright. "You should've fucking known better, woman. You should've taken the message and stayed away."

The pitiful girl was now shaking from head to toe, as he roughly grabbed her in ways that she found vastly inappropriate of anyone she didn't consider a lover, left savage kisses that would bruise in the morning and handled her with a malice that shouldn't be part of an act as the one he was trying to pull.

"Not enjoying it? What—did you expect me to be _nice_ about this too?" He gave another guttural, soul-scaring laugh. "Don't fucking joke with me." All trace of mirth—faked or otherwise—disappeared from his features and he shoved the girl back against the door by her neck, his calloused hand holding the slender column that connected her head with her body in a vice-like tight grip, ready to sever it any second if he damn well pleased. "What did you come here for then, woman? _Why_ did you come here if not to offer yourself to me? Huh? _Huh_?"

She didn't answer—didn't even look at him; she hadn't so much as glanced at him once since she'd turned her head away, and the tears were flowing down her sides with so much vigour it was a mystery whether she would've been able to see him even if she'd tried.

"Cat got your tongue? _Answer_ when I'm asking you a question, _bitch_!" He slammed her head hard against the door again, making her release a shriek of pain and surprise.

The girl opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. Her jaw just flapped open and closed for a while, her speech unintelligible, pissing her captor off further.

"What? I can't fucking hear you—_speak up_ if you're going to say something!"

"I wanted to forget!" The words came out from her pretty little mouth with so much strength that it caught him completely unawares—just a moment ago she hadn't been able to stitch together a sentence, now she actually has the guts to _yell_ at him?

But rather than the disrespectful way she was suddenly turning to him, he was intrigued by _what_ she'd said. His grip on her neck slackened greatly unbeknownst to him and he pulled a considerable distance away, allowing her to breathe freely for the first time in what felt like an eternity to her.

"_What_?" he spat out, genuinely befuddled with her response. It made _no sense_ to him, what she'd just confessed.

Her eyes were open and her watery gaze was pinned to the side, obviously avoiding his.

"It's been so long and no one even seems to remember me from my friends back at home—and that's good because I came here to protect them. I want them to be happy and safe… But at the same time it _hurts_ that they've forgotten me, forgotten all about me, left me behind like a thing of the past that should stay there while I am still stuck with them, still remember them and all that has happened… So I came here because… because I hoped you'd help me to forget them as well, forget everything and leave it in the past as well! I don't want to be forgotten by everyone. A-a-and… I…"

She looked at him for the first time then and he was hit with the full force of her despair, fear, disgust with herself for all the things that had just spilled forth from her mouth, after being bottled up for so long, and something he could not discern the origins of. She stared at him, nostrils flared, big eyes wide with overwhelming emotion and tears streaming down her cheeks unchecked. He was holding his breath without even knowing it, waiting for what she had to say after such a declaration.

"Please, Grimmjow… Please help me forget home and everyone who's already forgotten me."

The human woman had barely spoken in a whisper, her voice frail and hoarse with emotion but he had heard her. He'd heard her perfectly well and wasn't sure what to say or even if he should say anything at all, or how to react.

His monstrous, Arrancar side wanted to take her up on that offer and practically tear her apart in his urgency to comply with her wish. His animalistic side, obeying only instincts—the side of his character that ruled his behaviour twenty-four seven—knew very well how to slam all thoughts out of that airy head of hers, make her incapable of thinking anything for a long time, and make it an experience she'd never forget—or want to repeat—ever again.

But the tiny, once human—what very, very little, absolutely miniscule part remained of that time—side of him felt something in her voice appeal to it, trying to drag it forth, the reason and coherency of thought he had foregone when he'd become Arrancar.

This silly, stupid little girl here certainly had strange powers—her pixies were just barely scraping the surface of that fact. She never snapped and never talked back, but every now and then plucked some impressive courage from whoever knows what part of that pitiful little soul of hers, somehow getting the guts to put her foot down and stand her ground amongst a company of individuals who could kill her without even meaning to, if they weren't careful. She appeared frail, weak, pitiful and fragile—and yet she had those bravery episodes, times when she actually looked like she _knew_ what she was doing, as if she had a right to choose or even a possible choice to make.

She _oozed_ naivety and her being screamed 'good' and it was that exactly which irked him in her most of the time. She did not belong there, she stuck out like a sore thumb and she shoved into his face how different the two of them were. She annoyed him with her goody-two-shoes personality and made him want to tear her apart limb from limb.

And at the same when she begged—pleaded with him—so vulnerably, so openly, it was that weird one-in-a-million kind and good self of hers that actually submerged the evil desires in him and made him reconsider before brutally breaking her—willingly vulnerable and breakable—altogether just for kicks and because he _could_.

He sighed heavily, resting both of his hands on each side of her head, his gaze pinned to her. Orihime breathed in deeply once freed from his hand's imprisonment, massaging the tender flesh of her neck that he'd just released.

Grimmjow wasn't ordinarily someone who was often asked for favours or just asked _anything_. He was ordered to do things and he chose whether to do them or not because he was a rebellious kind of a person. He found himself at his wit's end when no one was actually _forcing_ him to do anything, when he had a choice to comply or not from the very start.

The man glared heatedly at the girl—it was _her_ fault to begin with!—but found he couldn't stay angry with her in her state. She looked so pitiful, so miserable, so sad of a sight as she looked at him, still expecting his reply to her heartfelt plea.

She was completely at his mercy, and she had placed herself there—it was probably the reason why he felt his anger—his strongest of driving emotions—dissipating at once.

He heaved a great sigh—yet another action very uncharacteristic of him—and pushed away from the door, from the wall, took a few steps further inside his own room—suddenly foreign, suffocating, too small to hold him in this uncalled for situation—put at unease like a caged animal, at a loss what to do, which of the signals his brain was sending as possible reactions to listen to.

Orihime took a tentative step forward as well, frantically brushing away the tear trails from her face, rubbing them away forcefully, as though ashamed of them. The Arrancar male felt an involuntary jolt of annoyance—not at the girl, but at her action, suddenly too merciless towards that easily irritated, sensitive skin of hers—which he quelled immediately upon realizing.

Grimmjow stepped forward—a bit uncertain—towards his guest again, lifting his hand toward her equally as unsure as his steps had been. An inch away from her cheek his eyes fell on her neck which was already beginning to bruise—because of him. Another involuntary stab of emotion—guilt, they called it, he believed—rose in him and he let his hand fall by his side again.

The girl stood there, motionless, innocent-looking as ever, expectant. Her frame was so tiny compared to his—he towered over her, overshadowed her as he stood in front of her. She was so frail and tiny and breakable and he didn't know how to handle her even if he didn't feel like destroying her completely.

"_Please, Grimmjow, help me forget home and everyone who's already forgotten me."_ It echoed in his mind, bounced around the confines of his consciousness, haunting, beckoning, compelling.

He knew he couldn't reject her.

Because in the end she had indeed come to offer herself. But not in the way he had threatened her she would be if she came close to his room ever again.

She'd come willingly, meaningfully.

So, out of _good of his heart_ (what a fucking joke), he would help her forget. He'd make her forget repeatedly, until she couldn't even remember the face of that shinigami buddy of hers, until he was all she could think of.

When Grimmjow took Orihime up on her offer, it never even occurred to him he might need help to forget _her_ as well.

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_finis_

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_Author Rant:_ Do note that Grimmjow chooses to be as "nice_"_ as possible to Orihime, even though his thought train sounds the same as it did when he was planning NOT to be nice. This is intentionally done so, just in case you're wondering. Because the guy is mostly fooling himself, as we all know. xD

And this is it, my GrimmHime ficlet after months of absence. xD How did you like it? What would you have rather seen written differently? Don't hesitate to tell. :3 I love feedback and concrit. x3 I live for improving and pleasing my readers. :3


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